where once becomes

That was then.

Once there was a way 

To get back homeward. 

Once there was a way 

To get back home. 

(--from, Golden Slumbers, by JOHN LENNON, PAUL MCCARTNEY

This is now.

Stay with this.

Where once is all there ever is.

within/without seminar

A glimpse, at times, is all you get.

Sometimes, it's all that's needed.

The Red Wheelbarrow                

so much depends
upon 

a red wheel
barrow 

glazed with rain
water 

beside the white
chickens.

(--Poem by William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963)  

At prison graduation ceremony yesterday an unconsummated moment when an unfinished carved book (they say) was not presented to me upon the rumor I was finished teaching for the university (and/or) at the prison. I could neither confirm nor deny the rumor beyond my typical end of term "I'm done!"

Speaking to a former graduate about his spirits and feelings I see he (and others) might benefit from a post-grad seminar-of-sorts set up to involve members of the outside community and men on the inside reading agreed upon texts, writing pieces about their thought/feeling/experience, exchanging them inside/outside, commenting, dialoguing, and philosophizing into the next piece of reading/writing. This would be an open support-learning community done within and without to deepen the core reality of our being-with one another and lernen-lassen (letting learning happen).

We could resurrect the title of our year long meetings with individuals at the prison begun in 2015, and expand it -- ILU COTO.

Here's how we described it:

 ILU COTO

individual learning       understanding       conversation together
(ilu coto translates as: the illusion of barrier, opening beyond preserve/reserve)
1x1 conversation, contemplative, meditative, corresponding   

ilu coto is the invitation to converse with one another about things that open us to what is present, and what is beyond our ordinary awareness. 

And so, this:

A New Seminar 

there's
so much 

at 4AM
silence reveals 

as darkness
retiring 

slips away 

within
without 

notice

     (--wfh, 16jan19)

being led out

In the Maximum Security Prison twenty men today received either an AA or BA degree from The University of Maine at Augusta.

We were there.

Good for the soul, it was.

It was.

Yes.

awakening reveals

No other.

Ultimately, morality, wisdom, and meditation are equally vital aspects of the Way that mutually condition one another. Awakening reveals the no-thingness of things—that no thing is apart from all other things. To realize truly that there is only this nature, with no “other” outside us, is to naturally want to refrain from causing harm, just as we refrain from doing harm to one of our own limbs or eyes. The Ten Cardinal Precepts then articulate how to live up to this vision of things as they are—as one. Conversely, by upholding the precepts even before awakening, we are allowing the afflictions that obstruct that experience to loosen and dissolve. And since the precepts collectively may be seen as a description of enlightened conduct, in harmonizing with them we are actualizing our buddhanature.
(--from, Pain, Passion, and the Precepts, In upholding the precepts, we actualize our buddhanature, By Bodhin Kjolhede, WINTER 2011)

If no other, then, love one an other.

meshugas

Soon, someday, the current president will no longer be president.

It will be nice to not be surrounded by ludicrous and meshugas.

It remains to decipher how and why he happened.

the essence of existence is the out-standing standing within the essential separation

Researching hypokeimenon, (because we are reading Nishida Kitarō tonight), I find the following:

1. 
   

The Hypokeimenon Story.         

Modernism also gave new meaning to what it means to be a subject, and the primary source of this innovation was the ego cogito of Descartes’ Meditations. The pre-Cartesian meaning of subject (Gk. hypokeimenon; Lat. subiectum) can still be seen in the "subjects" one takes in school or the "subject" of a sentence. In this ancient sense all things are subjects, things with "underlying [essential] kernels," as the Greek literally says and as Greek metaphysics proposed. (As opposed to substance metaphysics, the process view of this pansubjectivism makes all individuals subjects of some sort of experience.) After Cartesian doubt, however, there is only one subject of experience of which we are certain--viz., the human thinking subject. All other things in the world, including persons and other sentient beings, have now become objects of thought, not subjects in their own right. Cartesian subjectivism, therefore, gave birth simultaneously to modern objectivism as well. With the influence of the new mechanical cosmology, the stage was set for uniquely modern forms of otherness and alienation. https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/hypokeim.htm

And this:

    2.

Hypokeimenon (Greek: ὑποκείμενον), later often material substratum, is a term in metaphysics which literally means the "underlying thing" (Latin: subiectum).
To search for the hypokeimenon is to search for that substance which persists in a thing going through change—its basic essence.  (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypokeimenon

Finally, this:

   3.

20. In his broader “history of being,” Heidegger traces “subjectivism” back to Plato, whose doctrine of the ideas begins a movement whereby truth is no longer understood solely in terms of the manifestation of entities themselves but, instead, becomes a feature of our own “representational” capacities. In this way, truth becomes a matter of the way we secure our knowledge of entities rather than of the prior way entities disclose themselves to us. (On this “displacement of the locus of truth” from being to human subjectivity, see Thomson 2005, p. 160.) 

21. The modern prejudice that (to put it simply) all meaning comes from the human subjectreaches its most powerful apotheosis in Nietzsche and Freud. From Heidegger's perspective, however, this phenomenologically mistaken view misses (and subsequently obscures) the fact that meaning emerges at the prior practical intersection of human beings with their worlds (as well as in our engaged negotiations with one another). Heidegger is thus an ethical realist, one whose phenomenological investigations led him to recognize that the world is no mute partner but, rather, actively contributes to our most profound sense of what matters (see below and Thomson 2004). 

22. In “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger again presents his phenomenological conception of “existence” as a way to undercut and transcend the modern subject/object dichotomy: “In existence, however, humanity does not first move out of something ‘interior’ to something ‘exterior’; rather, the essence of existence is the out-standing standing within the essential separation [i.e., the ontological difference between being and entities thought in terms of the essential strife that joins “earth and world”] belonging to the clearing of beings.” (PLT 67/GA5 55)  

23. As this suggests, Heidegger's later work is dedicated to detecting, resisting, and, ultimately, transcending what he took to be the core of the Nazi ideology. For a justification of this admittedly provocative claim, see Thomson 2011, Ch. 7. On Heidegger's attempt to transcend aesthetics from within, see also Sallis 2008, Ch. 8. 

(--Notes to Heidegger's Aesthetics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger-aesthetics/notes.html

There you are!

While I like "the essence of existence is the out-standing standing within the essential separation," (cf.3: 22 above), I also like the pre-Cartesian "subjects in their own right." (cf.1, above).

By-and-by, if I open my mouth beyond Nishida, we should all be asleep by 7:29pm.

surcease solemnity of 3AM

With undulating chant

voices find narrow passage

through inner darkness --

 out-breath opens emptiness

follow; closely

God does not care for you. 

There's no subject/object here. 

God is care itself. 

And you are nothing other than; God.

six degrees; the nothingness beyond, god

Our yearning to care in a world yearning for care.

At times we don't care.

A coincidence of opposites.

as monks chant prime

Morning covering of snow.

Spring flowers, autumn moon, 

Summer breeze, winter snow 

When the mind is free from 

Unnecessary thoughts, 

Every season is just perfect! 

                 -- Ekai. (DailyZen)

Morning purring of cat.

first love

1 Jn 4:19-5:4

Those who love God must also love their brother and sister.

A reading from the first Letter of Saint John

Beloved, we love God because
   he first loved us.
If anyone says, “I love God,”
   but hates his brother, he is a liar;
   for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen
   cannot love God whom he has not seen.
This is the commandment we have from him:
whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God,
   and everyone who loves the father
   loves also the one begotten by him.
In this way we know that we love the children of God
   when we love God and obey his commandments.
For the love of God is this,
   that we keep his commandments.
And his commandments are not burdensome,
   for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world.
And the victory that conquers the world is our faith.

(--from Readings, Thursday after Epiphany)

through chaos reaching

His name was Duffy in the book. 

 "He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glasses." (--from, A Painful Case, by James Joyce, in The Dubliners)

Elsewhere, say, in Washington, another man wanders through chaos reaching for anyone nearby to cling to something solid.

We can only hope he, not the man in the story, moves further and further away into some enclosed setting where his grabbing hands find no one to drag down. 

not necessary to continue in the same direction

Listening to man who wants to build a wall. He is a mountain, not unlike the mountain of refuse at our town dump.

山不转路转 

Shān bù zhuǎn lù zhuǎn  [shan bu zhuan lu zhuan] 

A mountain cannot turn, but a road can 

It is not necessary to continue in the same direction, there are other alternatives to avoid an obstacle 

There's more than one way to skin a cat

mountain no turn road turn

http://www.chinasage.info/proverbstrive.htm 

Surely there is a road the rest of us can peregrinate.

Wave to that man.

He, or we, must leave this place. 

illimitably, through earth

A day will come when everyone will figure out that stupidity is no way to negotiate the needs of the world.

Whirled by the three passions,

One's eyes go blind; 

Closed to the world of things, 

They see again. 

In this way I live: 

Straw hatted, staff in hand, 

I move illimitably, 

Through earth, through heaven. 

               - Ungo (1580-1659) (dailyzen.com)

I look forward to seeing that day.

who wants to be forgotten

There is much to worry about here.

Q: "And you don't want to be forgotten?"
A: "Who wants to be forgotten?"
(--Loujain al-Hathloul, interviewed by Mona EL Naggar, NYT video, Ladies First: Saudi Arabia's Female Candidates

In case we forget.

See also The tragedy of Fahad Albutairi and Loujain al-Hathloul, by Kirk Rudell, 1/4/19, Washington Post

There  are  places  in  the  world  where  wealth  and  power  are  hard  luxuries  to  endure.

Epiphany, Theophany, Denha, Little Christmas, Three Kings' Day, a Christian feast day that celebrates the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ

A reading from the first Letter of Saint John
1John 2:18ff

Children, it is the last hour;
   and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming,
   so now many antichrists have appeared.
Thus we know this is the last hour.
They went out from us, but they were not really of our number;
   if they had been, they would have remained with us.
Their desertion shows that none of them was of our number.
But you have the anointing that comes from the Holy One,
   and you all have knowledge.
I write to you not because you do not know the truth
   but because you do, and because every lie is alien to the truth.

RESPONSORIAL PSALM
Ps 96:1-2, 11-12, 13 

R. (11a) Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice!

Sing to the LORD a new song;
   sing to the LORD, all you lands.
Sing to the LORD; bless his name;
   announce his salvation, day after day.

R. Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice!

Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;
   let the sea and what fills it resound;
   let the plains be joyful and all that is in them!
Then shall all the trees of the forest exult before the LORD.

R. Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice!

The LORD comes,
   he comes to rule the earth.
He shall rule the world with justice
   and the peoples with his constancy.

R. Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice!

GOSPEL ACCLAMATION
Jn 1:14a, 12a

R. Alleluia, alleluia.

The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.
To those who accepted him
he gave power to become the children of God.

R. Alleluia, alleluia.

GOSPEL


Jn 1:1-18

The Word became flesh.

A reading from the holy Gospel according to John

   In the beginning was the Word,
      and the Word was with God,
      and the Word was God.
   
He was in the beginning with God.
   All things came to be through him,
      and without him nothing came to be.
   What came to be through him was life,
      and this life was the light of the human race;
   the light shines in the darkness,
      and the darkness has not overcome it.
A man named John was sent from God.
He came for testimony, to testify to the light,
   so that all might believe through him.
He was not the light,
   but came to testify to the light.
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
      He was in the world,
         and the world came to be through him,
         but the world did not know him.
      He came to what was his own,
         but his own people did not accept him.

But to those who did accept him
   he gave power to become children of God,
   to those who believe in his name,
   who were born not by natural generation
   nor by human choice nor by a man's decision
   but of God.
      And the Word became flesh
         and made his dwelling among us,
         and we saw his glory,
         the glory as of the Father's only Son,
         full of grace and truth.

John testified to him and cried out, saying,
   “This was he of whom I said,
   ‘The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me
   because he existed before me.’”
From his fullness we have all received,
   grace in place of grace,
   because while the law was given through Moses,
   grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
No one has ever seen God.
The only Son, God, who is at the Father's side,
   has revealed him.

(--Readings, Epiphany Sunday, 6jan19)

...   ...   ...

Radical Trinity. All Reality is Trinitarian: God-Man-World

“The experience of the radical Trinity is to know oneself enveloped in a cosmotheandric perichoresis” (The Fullness of Man).

“There is nothing but God, a God that, as absolute ‘I’, has an eternal ‘Thou’ that is equal to him and nonetheless not a second ‘I’ but always a ‘Thou’. This ‘Thou’ is the Son, is the total Christ who includes the heavens and the earth. All beings share what they are by being one with him, with the Son. All that exists, that is to say, all of reality, is nothing but God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All that exists is nothing but Brahman as sat, cit, and ânanda, as being, consciousness, and beatitude. Sat as the very foundation of all that in one form or another constitutes ‘being’. Cit as the spiritual or intellectual bond that surrounds and penetrates all of reality. Ananda as perfect fullness that receives into itself and inspires everything that reaches out toward it” (The Unknown Christ of Hinduism)

(--Raimon Panikkar, http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-radical-trinity.html)

...   ...   ...

The Manifestation

Many arrivals make us live: the tree becoming
Green, a bird tipping the topmost bough,
A seed pushing itself beyond itself,
The mole making its way through darkest ground,
The worm, intrepid scholar of the soil—
Do these analogies perplex? A sky with clouds,
The motion of the moon, and waves at play,
A sea-wind pausing in a summer tree.

What does what it should do needs nothing more.
The body moves, though slowly, toward desire.
We come to something without knowing why.

(Poem, The Manifestation, by Theodore Roethke)

...   ...   ...


Poem, The Old Poets of China, by Mary Oliver:

...   ...   ...

There -- I think we can begin!

behold they are become wells of good water

In passing, researching "To Be or Not To Be, That is the Question: Yhwh and Ea, by Anne Marie Kitz, in Vol. 80 Issue 2 - Apr 2018, Catholic Biblical Quarterly.

I arrive at Wikipedia,  water and Enki: 

The cosmogenic myth common in Sumer was that of the hieros gamos, a sacred marriage where divine principles in the form of dualistic opposites came together as male and female to give birth to the cosmos. In the epic Enki and Ninhursag, Enki, as lord of Ab or fresh water (also the Sumerian word for semen), is living with his wife in the paradise of Dilmun where

The land of Dilmun is a pure place, the land of Dilmun is a clean place, The land of Dilmun is a clean place, the land of Dilmun is a bright place;
He who is alone laid himself down in Dilmun,
The place, after Enki is clean, that place is bright.

Despite being a place where "the raven uttered no cries" and "the lion killed not, the wolf snatched not the lamb, unknown was the kid-killing dog, unknown was the grain devouring boar", Dilmun had no water and Enki heard the cries of its goddess, Ninsikil, and orders the sun-god Utu to bring fresh water from the Earth for Dilmun. As a result,

Her City Drinks the Water of Abundance, Dilmun Drinks the Water of Abundance,
Her wells of bitter water, behold they are become wells of good water,
Her fields and farms produced crops and grain,
Her city, behold it has become the house of the banks and quays of the land.

Dilmun was identified with Bahrain, whose name in Arabic means "two seas", where the fresh waters of the Arabian aquifer mingle with the salt waters of the Persian Gulf. This mingling of waters was known in Sumerian as Nammu, and was identified as the mother of Enki.

(-- Enki, Wikipedia)

I can imagine the earliest experience of water. It must have seemed that one was drinking God, washing with God, cooking with God, immersing in God. 

In earliest pre-Socratic philosophy, Thales of Miletus said that water was 'it.'

3. Thales says Water is the Primary Principle
Aristotle defined wisdom as knowledge of certain principles and causes (Metaph. 982 a2-3). He commenced his investigation of the wisdom of the philosophers who preceded him, with Thales, the first philosopher, and described Thales as the founder of natural philosophy (Metaph. 983 b21-22). He recorded: 'Thales says that it is water'. 'it' is the nature, the archê, the originating principle. For Thales, this nature was a single material substance, water. Despite the more advanced terminology which Aristotle and Plato had created, Aristotle recorded the doctrines of Thales in terms which were available to Thales in the sixth century B.C.E., Aristotle made a definite statement, and presented it with confidence. It was only when Aristotle attempted to provide the reasons for the opinions that Thales held, and for the theories that he proposed, that he sometimes displayed caution.

(-- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Thales of Miletus (c. 620 B.C.E.—c. 546 B.C.E.)

Walking with leashed Rokpa in City of Rockland yesterday, melting sand and snow brown puddles at edge of every corner, waiting for new tires to be mounted, I am splashed by passing car with the essence of things on black coat and space grey trousers because that's just the way of things.

The white dog asks why, when there are several hundreds of acres of mountain out behind our house, we are walking the edges of snow and ice and melting mix of sand and salt on city streets, rushing cars uninterested in us after the undulation of temperature following several inches of wet storm the day before.

The various faces of water.

The sniggering sound of God.

you cannot not tell your story

ski walking stick

from barn to zendo --

squeaking snow

pre-dawn chant

bedtime

water runs

in sink

dishes

washed

madame speaker

New Congressional House.

A nice change.

Let's get started.

e t h i k o s

Reading 300+ pages of submitted papers.

The day runs out.

Word by word.

nihil obstat

Nothing moves —

still, it arrives at where it is

with no effort, no barriers

be forgot

there it is

one day gone

364 remain --

snow on ground

a trappist's thoughts

TUESDAY, JANUARY 1, 2019

Mary

There come to her doors men beating their breasts, confessing their sins, and having received pardon, they return home with joy...In the same way there draw near to her feet...the sad, the needy, the afflicted, the lonely...The prayers of all these who cry out of whatever tribulation she gladly receives and, making supplication to her Son, in her pity she turns from them every evil...with what great kindness she embraces and loves those who are akin to her in purity of heart...

We trust always in the kindness of Our Blessed Lady. She lets all the mercy that Jesus is come to us.

Orazio Gentileschi, Madonna with Sleeping Christ Child, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum. Lines from our Cistercian father, Amadeus of Lausanne.

still retain the ability to function

2019 will be a troubling, divisive, fateful year. 

2019 will be a loving, kind, compassionate year.

In his essay “The Crack-Up,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”     (--in, 1919: The Year of the Crack-Up, by Ted Widmer, NYT, 31dec18)

See what poet Charles Olson said about this in his poem Love.

Then what a sermon in a Unity-Unitarian church said.

Perhaps we are only as intelligent as the situation presenting itself with its intelligence to our awareness comes to be perceived, embraced, and embodied.

begin again

white smoke wanders dooryard,

wood stove doors open this new

year's morning --

Hebrew word, עזר, (ezer, helper)*

arrives as what we are to 

be with 

one-another 

...   ...   ...

       

            *  (note: ezer)

practicing end of year

we sat in silence

then chanted prajnaparamita --

in circle of poetry back in house

wide gaps of listening

nearing new year

not a drop of wine

in my house --

at least an old friend

in Mexico has his Merlot

this, from a hymn, office of readings

The zen monk cycling across Canada, the US, and Central America told us that his koan throughout was "What is this?"

     Good Christian friends, rejoice
     With heart and soul and voice;
     Now ye hear of endless bliss:
     Jesus Christ was born for this!
     He has opened heaven's door,
     And we are blest forevermore.
     Christ was born for this!
     Christ was born for this!

     Tune: In dulci jubilo 66.77.66.55.   Music: Klug’s Geistliche Lieder, Wittenberg, 1535.   Text: In      dulci jubilo: Latin and German, fourteenth century.   Translation: John Mason Neale, 1818-1866

"This" is what truth and reality is in zen awareness.

It is what Christ was born for.

Or, as another hymn says, "This, this, is Christ the King".

Pray for the grace of accuracy to be able to say throughout this coming year --

This is

what I am

becoming;

this is 

what I am

doing;

this is 

what I am

here and now!

mattock in winter

December 30th, 2018

Meeting an old Monk in deep Mountains

A cassock of coarse threads
A mind of moonlike kind;
A short mattock in his hand
To hew the sticks he finds.
By dark stones on the streamside
Over fallen leaves he goes;
A few wisps of cloud 
Trail two brows of snow.

- Guanxiu (832-912) dailyzen.com

ah, 4am

The hour when everything is at ready.

When prayer seems silent necessity.

And we are invited to listen as night confesses it's true allegiance. 

even more credible

There's something about reading from the iBreviary at side of a man the nurse says “is waiting for the angels to come tonight” that makes the words more real.

Ever since we heard this we have been praying for you unceasingly and asking that you may attain full knowledge of his will through perfect wisdom and spiritual insight. Then you will lead a life worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him in every way. You will multiply good works of every sort and grow in the knowledge of God. By the might of his glory you will be endowed with the strength needed to stand fast, even to endure joyfully whatever may come, giving thanks to the Father for having made you worthy to share the lot of the saints in light. He rescued us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. Through him we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins.

—from letter of Paul to Colossions 1, 1-14

The goodness and humanity of God our Savior have appeared in our midst. We thank God for the many consolations he has given us during this sad exile of our pilgrimage here on earth. Before the Son of God became man his goodness was hidden, for God’s mercy is eternal, but how could such goodness be recognized? It was promised, but it was not experienced, and as a result few have believed in it. Often and in many ways the Lord used to speak through the prophets. Among other things, God said: I think thoughts of peace and not of affliction. But what did men respond, thinking thoughts of affliction and knowing nothing of peace? They said: Peace, peace, there is no peace. This response made the angels of peace weep bitterly, saying: Lord, who has believed our message? But now men believe because they see with their own eyes, and because God’s testimony has now become even more credible. He has gone so far as to pitch his tent in the sun so even the dimmest eyes see him. 

—from a sermon by Saint Bernard, abbot (Sermo 1, in Epiphania Domini, 1-2: PL 133, 141-143)

We breathe together.

We think of peace.

you don't say

Have you seen that which cannot be seen?

Of course you have.

Seems paradoxical, eh?

We see.

But cannot say what we see.

All that can be done is act with compassion.

Compassion is the only way to say what cannot be seen.

doing only what we are

these five days

by many beds

in hospital

balancing patient

visiting with hospice

sitting and prison

teaching -- all three

a conversation with

my community --

our family sentience

one recognition

after another

walking frigid
mornings

mountain trail

icy brook

frozen field

my family
late december

sitting when all are standing

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - (591).                                                                                                       BY EMILY DICKINSON  

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - 

The Stillness in the Room 

Was like the Stillness in the Air - 

Between the Heaves of Storm - 

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry - 

And Breaths were gathering firm 

For that last Onset - when the King 

Be witnessed - in the Room - 

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away 

What portion of me be 

Assignable - and then it was 

There interposed a Fly -  

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz - 

Between the light - and me - 

And then the Windows failed - and then 

I could not see to see -

each atom, each element, each breath

yes --

it's all

we know

of god

haiku (christmas)

Yes

this

is what

I think

of you

eve of birth remembrance

Finally, Christmas Eve Vesper's antiphon:

Ant. When the sun rises in the morning sky, you will see the King of kings coming forth from the Father like a radiant bridegroom from the bridal chamber.

sunday's O antiphon

Ant. O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver, desire of the nations, Savior of all people, come and set us free, Lord our God.

all true speech

When you hear the sound of voices speaking truth, harden not your hearts, pay attention, and smile.

MS. TIPPETT: Right. Very interesting. I would love for you just to read a little bit more a psalm that you love right now. 

MR. BRUEGGEMANN: The Book of Psalms ends with these outrageous doxologies. “Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, fire, hail, snow, frost, stirring wind filling his command, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and cedars, wild animals and cattle, creeping things and flying birds, kings of the earth, princes and all rulers, young men and women, all old and young together.”
It’s an image of all creatures joining in doxology. I love that, to think that sea monsters — I don’t know how sea monsters howl or how they express their faith, but it’s an early form of [sings] “All creatures of our God and King.” The whole world is coming in doxology, and I just think it’s so wonderful.

I just read a book recently, and I don’t know whether it’s right, but it says that Socrates said that all true speech ends in doxology to God. I hope he said that. If he didn’t, he should’ve. [laughs]

(--from OnBeing, The Prophetic Imagination,) 

As good a Sunday service as I might've attended.

Bless their hearts!

(And thank you, Alexander Di Lella ofm, for your scholarly teaching on the Prophets fifty years ago)

one within the other

Never is light so strong as when darkness says "I have beaten you".

Light looks right through darkness, saying, "I love your diaphaneity in my presence."

Light suffuses darkness, allowing it to remain itself throughout interpenetration.

Hence, getting along, one with the other.

saturday's O antiphon

Ant. O King of all the nations, the only joy of every human heart; O Keystone of the mighty arch of man, come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust.

yes

Sleeping dog

First morning returning light

His sweet breath on gray rug

solstice

nothing

but rain --

first winter night

friday's O antiphon

Ant. O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. (Vespers)

late and soon

“The world is too much with us; late and soon” (—Wordsworth).

Let planet tip and turn, returning light from darkening descent. It is time to look beyond posturing prancing and begin upclimbing ascent to clear and unambiguous truth in joy! She, mother of light, will point.

a scary story

Everyone knows what a rotten piece of fruit tastes like. But the third and fourth bites, when taken, signal it's not about enjoying the fruit -- no -- it's about what you want from the person watching who gave it to you.

The torpid men with rancid juice dripping down their jowls are watched by gnarly eyes of smarmy face looking out from wretched man temporarily occupying Oval Office in deficient decline toward terminal throes of ill-gotten reign of democracide and denigration.

What so proudly we hailed is in danger of dark decomposition and decompensation.

The chickens, so to speak, are coming back to Washington, to get another vote and more putrid fruit from desiccated hands of poseur president on brink of vacating completely the unstable office he sits in shadows within.

thursday O antiphon

Ant. O Key of David, O royal Power of Israel, controlling at your will the gate of heaven: Come, break down the prison walls of death for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death; and lead your captive people into freedom.